


Whose War is Never Over

by sanerontheinside



Series: The Desert AUs [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, F/M, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Obi/Rex, Post-War, Pre-ANH, Reunion, Tatooine, The Desert AUs, basically always, mild carnage implied, or at least a happier middle?, past slavery/human trafficking, post-prequels, referenced/implied
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-15 15:39:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7228546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanerontheinside/pseuds/sanerontheinside
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a barren planet, Tatooine sure attracts a lot of people. RexObi week by jediprompts on tumblr, prompt 'Fleeting'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fleeting, Grasped

**Author's Note:**

> This initially started off as a response to jediprompts' Rex/Obi Week. The prompts were: Fleeting, Uncomfortable, Coping, Exhaustion, and Reminder. Over the course of 4-5 days, I wrote a few flash fics, and discovered that one of my OFCs decided to get more involved and then steal the story altogether. I liked Ch1, 'Fleeting, Grasped' as it was, though. So I'll be editing Ch's 2-4 and writing Ch5. The original 1-4 can be found on my tumblr, tagged #theDesertAUs. The Desert AUs series, however, if it ever grows out, will likely also include other AUs that decided Tatooine was a good place to start (too many, oh so many).

Rex decided very quickly that he didn’t like Tatooine. It was dusty and dry, the twin suns scorched through everything, and even the sand was fine enough to wear away vaporator parts and the finer components of landspeeders. Mos Espa and Mos Eisley were full of shifty characters and rough types, but by unspoken agreement, no one really bothered anyone else. He spent most days warding off womprats at the worst, and the local Tusken tribes never gave him any trouble, no matter what the settlers claimed about their violent attacks.  
  
He got stuck here, half-stupidly really, about half a rotation ago. Shuttle crashed. He'd holed up in some abandoned moisture farm to nurse his injuries, which weren't terribly extensive, thankfully. But he did take a blow across his back, and while it wasn't truly serious, he did have quite a time of it for the first few tens.  
  
Agami was the first native he’d met, prowling around the old hovel he’d claimed as his shelter. A small female Phindian, almost invisible in the fading light of the evening, she’d practically hurtled in through the door and just missed him, though twisting out of the way left him winded and seeing black spots. She’d shaken a staff at him threateningly, questioned him in rough Basic, hesitantly tried a few phrases in rougher Mando’a, then left him alone, apparently convinced he wasn’t much of a threat. A few hours later she’d reappeared, dragging along a crate. She shoved it through his door and slunk off again. The crate held medical supplies, some nutribars, some odd tools to fix vaporators with, and a bag of seeds with a note to check the cellar. And indeed, below he found a half defunct garden. Most of it was dust and crumbling plants, but one corner still held life and absolutely wild green things.  
  
If not for the odd little Phindian, Rex figured he’d never have found a single job on Tatooine. The seeds she’d given him were for some strange medicinal plants and a few more forgiving vegetables. They grew surprisingly well, and every so often he culled the population and brought over what he didn’t need to the slave quarters.  
  
In the time that he'd been there, it rained once - heavily, drops the size of pebbles beating against the still-warm sand with a hiss. Rex didn't sleep that night. It was the closest this dustball would ever come to Kamino, like hell he was going to miss it.  
  
By then, Rex had been properly out and about. He fixed vaporators, he fixed speeders and droids. He did odd jobs and got on well enough with some of the natives. He’d even picked up on rumours of clone troopers hiding out here, but never seen any of them. Every so often he’d make his way to Mos Eisley for a few odd parts for his shuttle, which he was still trying to soup up into something that could limp as far as the hell out of the Tatoo system - hell, at least to Naboo. But Tatooine was so far out of every sane person’s way that the chances of Rex getting the parts he needed most were slim to none. He wasn’t about to tangle with the Hutts, and that compounded the problems with availability.  
  
On his last visit to Mos Eisley, Agami called him over to her, handed him a wrench and gestured at her old bike, apparently stranded. She hovered over him at first, but then as he tinkered with it she wandered off somewhere. By the time he was finished, Agami reappeared with a sack of pallies and a whispered directive to lay low for the next day or two. There was a sandstorm of epic proportions on its way. Rex smiled, nodded gratefully, and trudged back ‘home’. He passed an Imp patrol on his way, with a hood up, goggles over his face and rags over his mouth and nose. No one stopped him.  
  
The sandstorm never came. Clambering onto the roof of his hovel the next morning, he found the storm hovering in the middle of uninhabited desert, swirling and dancing around itself. Rex felt his jaw drop.  
  
He'd heard the stories, of the crazy old wizard who lived out in the desert. Every time he heard those whispers and murmurs and awed tones, he felt an ache in his chest. Once, not so long ago, the Force had been more than mere legends and stories whispered in fear.  
  
He wondered who it might be. A Jedi, probably. One way or the other, it was pretty obvious he was better off keeping away from them. But as he watched the sands churn that morning, he felt inexplicably drawn toward the storm. Instinct went to war with common sense: if it was a Jedi, he could expect to be dead before he hit the ground, and if it wasn’t a Jedi, it wasn’t worth tangling with. But as the sands settled and the day dragged on, Rex hauled the improvised covering off his shuttle and reviewed the damage again and wondered what the hell he had left to lose. Even with his latest repairs, he wasn’t going anywhere soon.  
  
He was tempted, for a moment, to go straight to Jabba’s palace, take a contract with a shuttle as payment, but the day he trusted a Hutt would be the day he knew he'd taken a blow to the head too hard somewhere. Not yet. Rex hadn’t explored the area much in the sandstorm’s direction, and Agami had been full of dire warnings about the Tuskens and canyons. But from what he could tell, she indulged hyperbole a little, so he packed enough food and pallies for a few days, checked the vaporators and perimeter posts, put almost all nonessential systems on low power with the exception of the ventilation and water supply for his cellar garden. The next morning Rex wrapped every inch of skin again, and set out to explore the canyons.  
  
It was almost midday when he reached them, Tatooine suns high overhead encouraging him to drop down a few feet along the jagged walls and settle in an alcove. The alcove proved to be a cave of sorts - he figured there was a system of fissures here large enough to fit jawas, but probably not much of anything larger. He did find a little snake that stuck its tongue out at him, curled around his foot almost as though it was doing him a favour, clung for about a minute and then slithered off disinterestedly. Rex could almost hear a trickle of water, and decided to follow that.  
  
He didn't find it, though he did find a group of Tusken raiders. Rex kept a safe distance away, watching them - apparently sparring. A smallish figure was moving well in the middle of a tight circle, facing one after another. He figured this was some sort of ritual - coming of age, he thought at first, but the warrior was far too experienced - perhaps an induction into a clan.  
Something about those well-choreographed movements struck him as familiar. Whoever it was, they were good, using a hodgepodge of fighting styles and keeping their opponents off-balance. Some of those moves were sneaky, practically screaming Mando’a, and some of them were more acrobatic. All of them were beautiful to watch, so he stayed, hoping he’d hunt down the nagging feeling of familiarity. Inexplicably, his mind wandered back to the old wizard in the desert instead.  
  
In the end Rex decided he'd best get a move on, or else find a place for the night. And since he didn't expect to find another empty hovel, and was certainly was in no shape to fight some twenty or more well-versed opponents for the right to one night in their encampment, he shouldered his pack and shoved off.  
  
A few hours later, the second sun was hanging low over the horizon, and Rex found himself near another moisture farm. It looked about as forbidding as the one he'd claimed, equally abandoned, but the perimeter posts were active and one of the vaporators rattled angrily at him as he'd passed. Rex stopped a few paces away to give it a hard sideways glare. It rattled again - a loud, grating mechanical wheeze that sounded like the thing was screaming to be put out of its misery. He wondered for a moment if the noise acted as deterrent for any of the desert predators or the womprats. Then again, while it probably did indeed ward off the odd intruder, it sounded a great deal more like the thing was on its last legs, and no one wanted to lose even one cranky vaporator.  
  
The pack held enough tools to deal with most vaporator issues, and a couple of the more common replacement parts - a habit he'd picked up over the last few months as he'd moved from one job to the next. Compared to his kit and gear during the wars, it wasn't all that much weight to carry anyway, so he hadn't bothered to take it out for this outing either. He'd meant to check in on Agami’s place anyway, just in case.  
  
Rex bypassed the perimeter posts easily enough and crouched down to examine the machine. It whined pitifully, then went back to clanging and grumbling as he took it apart, improvised a quick fix, then shut it up again. For a moment it vibrated dangerously, but when Rex flashed it a warning gesture it quieted and went back to whirring like normal, if a little louder than average.  
  
He started at an odd muffled sound behind him - something that sounded like garbled speech - and whipped around, pistol at the ready. It was a lone Tusken, who backed away slightly, hands upraised. They said something that sounded something like ‘Oh, _kriff!_ ’, and then, telegraphing their movements, began to strip the mask away.  
  
The figure proved human enough, pale, features unclear in the desert twilight. A familiar tenor sent a cold shudder through Rex when the man spoke again: “Of all the beings I'd ever expected to find at my door, an ex-commander of the GAR wasn't one.”  
  
Rex froze, his brain stuttered. Half of him was screaming _Not Dead_ and half was completely stalled in disbelief so strong it bordered on denial. Somewhere in the middle there was some sort of automatic response which - first - had Rex raising his hands and moving his finger away from the trigger, and second, speaking.  
  
“The Empire casts a long shadow, I was hoping to lose it under the twin suns,” he said. It wasn’t exactly the Alliance verbal confirmation, but he didn’t care right now. “Only found more shadows of a different kind.”  
  
Shadows - more like ghosts. Rumours of living brothers or Jedi, never confirmed, but also never disproven. He clung to that - the lack of one solid answer, _you are the last, or they’re all long gone._ The last few months, living in a haze of heat and an unobtrusively chronic dull pain, on some strange vegetables and Agami’s vaguely bitter but otherwise tasteless tea, Rex wrapped himself up in those rumours as his one comfort. He should have crashed the damn shuttle better.  
  
The man tipped his head a little. Rex swore under his breath, mind still rebelling at the familiarity of it - the wary pose, the gesture, the voice. He was almost glad for the twilight: at this distance he couldn’t even see the man’s face, and for a moment he didn’t have to accept the fact that it wasn’t Kenobi standing in front of him, _alive._  
  
A quiet voice brushed over the threshold of his hearing. “ _Motir ca'tra nau tracinya,_ ” the man said, and Rex froze. His breath caught - because it still wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be him. Kenobi drowned on Utapau, Kenobi died on Mustafar, Kenobi died somewhere over an Imp-controlled base, leading one of the Rebel cells in an attack that would have left the stronghold a smoking ruin. Kenobi had been cut down by Vader, along with so many of Rex’s brothers and so many Jedi. But this wasn’t him.  
  
The man was suddenly close, much closer, close enough to reach out and touch. Rex had a rush of wild panic wondering how he’d lost focus and let him get that close, but he stood paralysed. Even in the fading light, the features were unmistakeable.  
  
He reached up to pull away the wrappings from Rex’s face, pushing them back until the improvised cowl fell about his shoulders. A hand against his skull, a thumb brushed lightly over a short scar that crept back into the now-grizzled blond hair. Rex felt something crumble in the man standing in front of him. He was suddenly pulled into a tight embrace, like he might fade. Like Obi-Wan was just as afraid of this being some sort of vision as Rex had been.  
  
It hadn’t been real, solid, undeniable, until this moment. No longer a fantasy held at arm’s length, briefly longed for and steadily pushed aside. The shadow of the war still hung overhead somewhere, but that would be dealt with later. For now, it was enough - more than enough - to feel the touch of another person, someone who had seen the same things, and lived them. “ _Vode an,_ ” Rex whispered, and held Obi-Wan’s sagging form tightly to him.  
  
He didn't have a reason to leave this dustball anymore. Far more importantly, he'd found a reason to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando'a translations  
> 'Motir ca'tra nau tracinya' - Those who stand before us light the night sky in flame  
> 'Vode an' - Brothers all


	2. Quick Sands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Younglings. Younglings everywhere. Also, a surprise guest.

Rex scanned the inside of Obi-Wan’s hut with an ache deep in his chest, recognising the signs of loneliness. The Tuskens were probably the first living beings he’d spoken to in a long while, and Rex would not have been surprised to learn that the ‘long while’ amounted to at least a month. He got as far as wondering just how much more tea he would owe Agami to convince her to check in on them here every now and then before he stumbled over his train of thought and swore.

For that entire line of reasoning, he’d been assuming Obi-Wan would let him stay. No, not assuming - hoping. But honestly he couldn't imagine turning around and walking out the door again into complete desert silence. Looking over at Obi-Wan, who appeared to be - preparing tea, of all things, hands shaking minutely as he reached for the mugs, leaves, and water - Rex dared to think he didn't want to be left alone, either.

“Got anything stronger?” he asked, forcing the words from his dry throat.

Kenobi jerked upright, as if he’d expected Rex to vanish after more than a minute of silence, then relaxed into a stance that was a little more awkward. Maybe even embarrassed. “I, uh - no,” he stumbled. “Had to get rid of it.”

Rex recognised that, too. He’d seen too many of his brothers, who had either defected or ended up in Rebel-aligned medical facilities where they were dechipped and put through detox of all sorts. Alcohol was the most popular poison, stims a close second, because there wasn't much else you could get a steady supply of. And it wasn't as though he hadn't felt the impulse to drink the local cantina dry himself, on occasion. He nodded and walked over to accept the tea instead.

In spite of the tea, which was the best one could find on Tatooine but had never been Rex’s preference, the rest of the evening was a bit tense. There was an undercurrent of subjects skirted as best as possible, deeper questioning consciously avoided. Rex explained how he managed to crash-land on Tatooine - “kriffing Imp bastards got one lucky shot.”  _ Couldn’t even make it count, _ he didn't say, and still Kenobi winced. Obi-Wan admitted that rumours of him leading the Rebels were not just empty legends. 

“They needed help,” Obi-Wan shrugged. “We set up independent cells, small groups with no knowledge of each other.” 

“Guerrilla warfare,” Rex muttered, a wry smile on his lips. 

“Very effective. Recruited malcontents, dechipped deserters,” Obi-Wan trailed off. 

Rex wanted to ask who he'd seen - who, last he knew, might still be alive and snarling defiance at the Empire. But Obi-Wan sat turning his mug in his hands, a lost look on his face. Rex was sitting across from the General who set up the whole system of independent cells and even trained most of the fighters. But the General was retired, and here on Tatooine he was simply Ben, sitting across the small cramped main room from a fellow veteran of the same war. A survivor of the same nightmare. 

In the end, there were a few names. Most of the Wolf Pack hadn't been with their General when the order came, and they sure as hells hadn't joined the Empire’s forces. Obi-Wan fondly recalled being bowled over by a gangly Twi'lek, all knees and elbows: Numa found him, and thus Boil found the Rebellion. Commander Fox had just blundered into the same cantina one day, more dead than alive. He'd apparently taken a shot at the new Emperor, for Fives and for all his brothers. 

For every name of someone who joined the Rebellion, Rex sensed the unspoken grief for every brother who didn't. For those who ran into the General in the dead of night and didn't have fight left in them to drop their weapon and let the man pass. 

Obi-Wan sighed and passed a hand over his eyes. “There may be others. I hope there are. But the way we set up the cells - with as little knowledge of each other as possible - Rex, I don't know all the names.”

“We picked up a couple of speedies about a year ago,” Rex supplied, after a moment. “Needles and Skipper. Pulsar showed up out of nowhere, the scary bastard.”

“He was Torrent, wasn’t he?” Obi-Wan asked softly, like he was afraid to hear the answer. 

“Not many of the 501st made it back.”  _ None of those who’d attacked Temple. _ Rex left that unspoken yet again, because he’d seen all too many reports brought back by the spies - the lists of names practically that had imprinted themselves on his vision. ‘Vader’s Fist’ didn’t last a year. 

The conversation stuttered uncomfortably. Obi-Wan hedged answering even seemingly innocent questions, like “Why Tatooine, of all places?” But as the night dragged on, he didn't seem inclined to let sleep overtake him, even as the stilted pauses between questions grew longer and ever more weighted by the unspeakable past. He must have been tired, Rex was sure of it. Just as he was now sure that Obi-Wan had fought for a place in the Tusken clan this morning. But he also recognised the uneasy line of tension that his body had become. He read in it a kind of wariness bordering on distrust.

And because he knew his Jedi, he also read in it the weight of sleepless nights, broken by nightmares that were, really, just memories that refused to leave. Rex knew those too, and in a way he even treasured them. Even if it was every brother’s death, in excruciating detail, it was still a memory of them, and he never wanted to give up a single scrap of one, not even for his peace of mind.

The silence lengthened, still drawn taut between the two, and Kenobi’s head fell forward, chin resting on his chest. Rex almost managed a smile at the familiarity of it, and cast a more careful look around the place. He noticed a small cot tucked into a corner, a sort of nest of blankets.  _ It can't be comfortable, waking up after spending a night in that armchair, _ he thought, and rose with a small sigh to try to rouse and move Obi-Wan. The familiarity of the gesture almost stole away his breath. 

At the shuffling sound, Kenobi jerked awake, eyes shining with a light so intense it was almost feverish. “Please, Rex,” he managed hoarsely before his voice cracked on the final word, “stay…”

As if he could have left his General alone again, Rex thought, a more genuine smile brightening his face, and held out his hand to Kenobi. Obi-Wan eyed it for a moment, then nearly lunged forward to wrap it in a vice-like grip and pull Rex into him. They stood like that for about a minute before Rex realised he’d fallen asleep again, and laughed gently.

After that, even though there were silences still too wide to cross, somehow the days were easier. But it was only two or three days later that the really strange things started happening. First it was just one of them - a scared silent shadow, small and defensive, lurking just within the perimeter Obi-Wan set up around his hut. As a general rule - and this lesson was brought home to the intruder post haste - it was unwise to go sneaking about too close to a wanted Jedi Master and an ex-commander of the GAR. The young Twi’lek boy found himself hanging in air and kicking out wildly in all directions, faced with a glaring Captain Rex and a very surprised Ben Kenobi.

“Well, hello there,” Obi-Wan said gently, and let the boy down a safe distance away from them. The Force trembled with fear all around him, and Obi-Wan directed a pleading look at the Captain. Rex hesitantly lowered his pistol. “He’s probably an orphaned Padawan,” he told him softly. He then raised his voice again as he crouched down to ask, “What’s your name?”

Wide eyes snapped open, and the kid just barely whispered, voice cracked, “Talumi’naru.”

Rex had a bad start, suddenly realising just how young the kid was - probably not more than fourteen. There was a broken manacle at his ankle, and if Rex had to hazard a guess, someone had been trying to sell him off as a slave.

He was not wrong, as it happened. The kid was either lucky the transmitter malfunctioned, or somehow broke it himself. Later, when they removed it, Obi-Wan showed Rex the circuitry - completely fused and useless. “We used to study these at the Temple,” he remembered. “Long live Master Tet,” Obi-Wan sighed, and pointed out that with a knowledge of the circuitry and the right application of the Force, Talumi might well have escaped. He’d probably relieved some guard of a blaster and took to the desert, following the barest trace of a strong Force Sensitive - or maybe just following the rumours of the crazy old desert wizard.

There was one other possible culprit, they soon realised: Agami, busybody that she was, had apparently discovered Rex’s new abode. She hissed and snarled at him for abandoning the vegetables, much to Obi-Wan’s bemusement, then waved a dismissive hand and shrugged, saying she’d tend to the place herself. After all, the roof no longer leaked and the Jawas stayed away, and even the womprats seem to have learned not to bother the ex-Commander of the GAR, even while he was away. When she finally left, still muttering curses and complaints in garbled Basic, Talumi'naru reappeared from his hiding place behind Ben’s armchair, and sheepishly admitted that he was ‘kind of scared of her’, like he’d run into her before. It was worth the look on the boy’s face, Rex decided, when Obi-Wan actually laughed.  

Time began to pass more quickly on Tatooine, and the days were full of things more wonderful than Rex had ever imagined he might live to see - and in the middle of a desert, at that. The sight of grains of sand dancing in the sun around them as Obi-Wan meditated. The sight of him practicing lightsaber katas - the very idea that, even now, he still took up his weapon and dared to dance. He sometimes sparred with Rex, teaching him new moves in hand-to-hand, and matching him blow for blow with a staff. And together, they taught Talumi whatever he asked, which, as he grew bolder, became more and more.

Talumi vanished, sometimes. Rex often wondered where the boy got off to, but they at least trusted him to be able to take care of himself. It was when he returned with another youngling, marks on wrists and ankles where binders had clearly been, that Rex began to suspect. Obi-Wan said nothing: he simply cleaned the cuts and bruises, muttering soothing nonsense to the frightened child, made another cup of tea and scraped together some sort of food. Later he and Rex asked the child if she was up for removing the transmitter that must surely still be there, and she agreed. The little device had also somehow suffered fused circuitry, same as Talumi’s.

Talumi started wandering off more regularly, always coming back with food. The next time a youngling appeared, she came to them trailing behind Agami, followed by another two even younger - siblings, one of Five Standard and the other barely Eight. Agami offered, silently, to help - by guarding the door at night and wrangling the younglings during the day. She seemed a little less grouchy, and the children soon found a way to communicate with her in her broken Basic.

Within two tens, they’d nearly lost track of who came on what day, but the pattern was much the same. They’d definitely given up on trying to figure out where they all came from and why. Some are Force Sensitive, some not so much. There was a Trandoshan of Four Standard, a Bothan approaching Nineteen Standard. There was a fluffy juvenile Rishii of unknown age who barely spoke at all, but followed Obi-Wan around like she was afraid he’d disappear. Rex sympathised; he still sometimes felt his lungs constrict much the same way. Rex was, however, infinitely baffled by the fact that he had his own following of half a dozen younglings.

Agami eventually convinced them to migrate over to ‘her place’, which did indeed turn out to be quite a bit bigger. It was a wreckage of an old freighter, converted by smugglers and crashed miserably by pirates. It lay half-buried in the sand so that very little of it remained in sight, and looked deceptively small. This thing had once run with a crew of thirty souls, in its more reputable days. Agami had installed vaporators herself, having discovered the thing and staked her claim to it some six years ago.

The older ones came and went in much the same way as Talumi. Not surprisingly, they’d all found odd jobs to do in Mos Espa or in the slave quarters. A few appeared less frequently, having found places in Mos Eisely. Echin Chiya worked in the cantina there. Adir, a Zabrak boy of twelve, found work in the one junk shop that rated higher than Watto’s, and in lieu of pay often came back with replacement parts for speeders, vaporators, and droids. Agami’s wreckage, with Rex and Kenobi there, had become a safe place, a home for some and a haven for others in the endlessly desolate, scorched wasteland. 

A complex system of swaps for goods and services took root, and Obi-Wan, Rex, and Agami found themselves nearly outmatched. But the system was hardly limited to their little - but rapidly growing - family. Ikrit fixed anything and everything in the slave quarters, free of charge, but often returned with appreciative gifts of food. Kodika, who had once been Padawan to a Healer, spent her first few weeks in a flutter of communication with Agami and had also taken up staying in the slave quarters as the local medic. Her Force Healing is the best by far, anyway, but with Agami’s help she learned the local medicines. Rex’s old hut, when he saw it again, amazed him: the entire structure had been converted into a teeming hothouse, and Agami’s teas were the main export.

Rex and Obi-Wan eventually discovered that virtually all of the older children who showed up at their farm know exactly how to defuse the transmitters. Talumi may have been the first one they met, but there was no way he was the originator of that clever trick. In fact, Echin and Kodika came back with a new charge most often, and both Rex and Obi-Wan found them teaching the newcomers how to destroy the transmitters without harm to themselves. Kodika noticed them first, and froze, wary. Obi-Wan had exchanged a brief glance with Rex, then shrugged and asked her to show him how to do it. 

But it was Echin - perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not - who told them there is someone they  _ had _ to see, who would be waiting for them in the cantina for the next two days and no longer.

Rex watched as Obi-Wan’s brows knit together - not in suspicion or any kind of distress, but concentration, like he was searching the Force for answers. It hit him like a punch to the gut that he hadn’t seen his General do that since the war. Meditation and lightsaber katas were one thing, but this? This was some sort of acknowledgement of a future. It was hope. 

Obi-Wan prodded gently at Echin’s statement as if it hung in the air before him. It felt like something big, something that shimmered with possibilities in the Force - possibilities Obi-Wan didn’t quite understand the feel of. They were not, strictly speaking, dangerous - it wasn’t that at all.

With a faint start he realised that he had finally been starting to think of this place as home. And Rex, if that smile was anything to go by, had been thinking the same.

The next day, Ben Kenobi sat down to order a brandy at the cantina in Mos Eisely. Echin eyed him hawkishly from the far end of the bar as the bartender slid him a glass. “With compliments,” he muttered, pointing at a table well-hidden in shadows.

“Right,” Ben said, with a hunter’s smirk, tossed back his glass, and moved to cross the room. A silent shadow followed him unobtrusively along the far wall, invisible unless you knew where to look, until he reached the corner whence the compliments had issued.

For a moment the hooded figure waiting for them there just sat, as if staring down into their lap. Then they stood, raised their head just enough, and -

“Good to see you again, Grandmaster,” a soft and familiar voice greeted him. And, with a nod at the shadow, coupled with a particularly warm smile, “Captain. Rex.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHSOKA'S BACK!


	3. Cold Comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The General gets pulled out of retirement. Sort of.  
> RexObi week day three - prompt: Coping.

Ahsoka’s appearance on Tatooine, though welcome, did bring with it a host of other  _ things _ that no one was at all prepared to deal with. Thankfully her traveling companion, Ventress, didn’t particularly like the desert. While she and Kenobi managed to maintain an air of tolerance, even if it was laced with amusement and the odd verbal jab, Rex was far less forgiving. Worse, he couldn’t seem to help the fact that his hand itched for the blaster every time she was in sight. 

Ventress, as it turned out, was actually among the lesser of their fresh crop of worries, though she was indeed a collection of worries in one self. Instead, Ventress served as a ‘polite reminder’ that Ahsoka was only there for two days. After all, Ahsoka was part of the Alliance, and hardly out on shore leave. With the discovery of one of the Rebellion’s fiercest generals here, alive, if retired, Tatooine had suddenly become important to the Rebels. 

“How did you find me, exactly?” Obi-Wan asked as they made their way back to the old wreckage. 

Ahsoka coughed and cast a sharp look at Echin on her right. “Padawan,” she half-growled, expecting at least some sort of clarification. Echin instantly shied away, accidentally running into Ventress - who smiled down at the girl sharply. Realising she’d drifted in an even worse direction, Echin leapt aside with an alarmed squeak and made excuses about going on ahead to warn Agami to expect guests. 

“Your Padawan?”

“No,” Ahsoka sighed, with a single shake of her head. “They are orphaned now, almost all of them. Apparently, the Order once used black markets and slave trading networks to maintain closer contact with the Outer and Mid Rim. At the start of the war, much of this network broke down, but some of the old favours and deals still held sway. Surprisingly, a few of the older children proved best at infiltrating smuggler crews and brokering deals with the ringleaders -” 

Obi-Wan pulled back with a glare, but Ahsoka shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know all of the details. I know, at least, that no Jedi Padawan could learn to disarm a transmitter like that on their own.” Her Grandmaster stared a moment longer, blinked like he’d never seen sand before, and stormed off. 

Rex watched him glide away angrily over the dunes, then fell back into step beside Ahsoka - studiously keeping distance from Ventress, who ignored him perfectly in return. “What was that about?” Though he could guess. 

“Apparently some  _ Jedi _ -” Ahsoka spat the word, clear in her opinion of this mysterious person “- decided children made good spies, and slave-trade networks were a good way to collect information. They at least put children through some kind of training, in case they were ever caught or someone tried to sell them. Not like that could ever make up for using them that way.” 

Ventress snorted, unexpectedly, from Ahsoka’s right. 

“Asajj,” the Togruta began with a long-suffering air, like this was an argument they’d had a thousand times. 

“It  _ was _ a good information system. And everyone knew not to bother the Shadowcat orphans, lest they wanted to wake up with their reproductive organs in their mouths,” Ventress snapped. “It was a damned good network, built on honour and Life Debts, gratitude and respect. And anyone who says there’s no honour amongst thieves doesn’t realise that without it, half the Outer Rim would have been wiped out a century ago.” 

Rex dropped the animosity completely in favour of staring at Ventress in confusion. “Shadowcat orphans?”

“They called themselves that, when we found them,” Ahsoka explained. “They told us about this spy ring, and of course we were appalled at first. It made sense, but it seemed barbaric.” 

“They called their Jedi the Shadowcat. It used to be a cantina on Jabiim,” Ventress added with a shrug. “It closed down before the war. ‘Spy ring’ may be too strong a word for it, but near as anyone can tell, someone was looking after these orphans as far as twenty years ago. Everything fell apart with the end of the war.”

“Not surprising,” Ahsoka nodded. “Half the people were willing to sell the other half out to the Empire as enemies simply to curry favour with the new regime. Even a system held together with honour and Life Debts couldn’t ensure you could trust your old friends.” 

Later, over a strained dinner, Obi-Wan was still seething. Ventress apparently took it upon herself to present her view. She cornered him on the roof of Agami’s wreck that night, and Ahsoka happily helped Rex distract the younglings from the raised voices outside. 

Half an hour later, Ventress slipped back in with a satisfied grimness to her, like she’d made her point and settled it. Rex waited another few minutes, but Obi-Wan didn't follow her in, so Rex went out to find him. 

Agami's wreckage was possibly just a slight bit more comfortable for stargazing than the roof of Obi-Wan’s home. The slightness of that improvement wasn't doing much for Rex as he clambered up the side to join his Jedi, avoiding corroded metal and jagged tears in the hull. Obi-Wan said nothing as Rex settled beside him, but when Rex raised an arm invitingly he leaned into him without a word. 

“She seems to think they stood a better chance with this Shadowcat person than without,” Rex ventured, after a moment. 

Obi-Wan sighed. “Much as I hate to say it, she's probably right.”

Rex nodded, letting his hand move in soothing circles over Obi-Wan’s back, enjoying the feel of tension slowly easing back from his tightly-strung frame. “Still angry,” he added eventually, almost as an afterthought. 

Kenobi turned his head into Rex’s shoulder and chuckled softly. “I know exactly what you mean.”

For once, Kenobi curled up into a ball of dead-to-the-world, exhausted Jedi and spent most of the night in uninterrupted sleep. He barely cracked an eye open when Rex tried to coax him inside. It worked surprisingly well - in that Obi-Wan didn’t fall off the wreck before his feet hit the ground. After, though - he certainly tried to hit any half-way horizontal surface in his path. Rex caught him and, with extreme care, bundled him into the quarters they’d claimed as their own. By the power of either Agami’s brilliance or sheer apathy, there were no beds or cots or bunks. There were only piles of blankets and cushions. It seemed relatively safe to just place Obi-Wan in a puddle of those and expect him not to kick himself off the bed in the middle of the night. 

This was the night that Rex couldn’t sleep. Something about those children set off things he couldn’t ignore. The younglings at the Temple, for one thing - that was a horror never too far out of mind. Even the system of complicated swaps and trades started to make some kind of sense. They’d never simply traded for food and parts, they’d traded for information. Younglings were practically invisible - they had eyes and ears that they knew how to use, but no one paid them any mind. People often underestimated children, Jedi Padawans or not. Objectively, Rex knew this and even understood it, but frank exploitation still rankled. And then there was fact that they had been exploited by a Jedi. 

Or had they? 

Did it actually matter, if the person they’d looked to for help couldn’t protect them? 

He was nearly startled halfway out of his skin when a hand came down on his shoulder. 

“Rex?” Ahsoka stood staring at him in surprise, but also with a slightly apologetic dip to her head. 

“Sorry. For a moment I thought you were Ventress.”

“I guess she rubs off,” she shrugged, and a funny little embarrassed smile appeared on her face. 

“Uh-huh.” Rex did not want to know. “Ahsoka, you’re not just here visiting your old grandmaster, are you? The Rebels want him back.”

What  _ that _ look on Ahsoka’s face signified, Rex was not prepared to say. It gave him a painful twinge, though, reminding him all too sharply of General Skywalker in his more mulish moments. “I came myself because I didn’t want anyone else to come here and either get themselves killed or drive Obi-Wan deeper into hiding. Not that I think that’s possible, but there’s always Dagobah.”

Rex felt his entire frame go taut, even though it was ridiculous - this was  _ Ahsoka, _ for Force’s sake. She wasn’t going to drag Kenobi off into the Rebellion just like that. 

“I didn’t want to ask him,” she sighed, crouching down beside where Rex had been sitting not a moment ago. “But the situation is getting desperate. We’re spread too thin, and he trained most of the best pilots anyway.”

Oh, fuck. “You may not even get a chance,” Rex sighed. 

For the last few months, Obi-Wan had been less and less skittish around the children. He’d always been the first to care for any injuries or simply hold them when they needed it, but mostly it was clear that they were largely self-sufficient. No longer focused merely on his own survival in the harsh desert, Obi-Wan had come slightly unmoored: he was surrounded by younglings he would have been more than willing to care for, and yet they didn't seem to need him. He felt useless here, especially now when he didn’t devote every second to simply surviving and exploring a deeper connection to the Force out of absolute loneliness. 

Ahsoka wouldn't get the chance: at the first sign that he was needed, Obi-Wan would be off Tatooine like a shot, to help the Alliance, to get off this kriffing dustball and do something  _ useful. _ He’d probably already sensed the opening. And Rex - well, Rex would follow. 

“I'm sorry,” Ahsoka half-whispered. 

Rex shook his head mildly. “Kenobi always was such a kriffing Jedi. You’re leaving tomorrow?”

She nodded. 

“Then he’ll ask you tomorrow.”

And he did, of course. Ventress had given him an odd look, but not dared to say a word. 

So Ahsoka told them about one missing spy, a Jedi who’d crossed Vader’s sights trying to steal the plans for a new weapon the Empire was building. Apparently, at least according to the last communication they’d had from her two months ago, she got as far as posing as a technician, which should have given her access to all the plans. 

Obi-Wan leaned back in his seat. “And she's gone missing,” he said flatly. 

Ahsoka winced. “Not quite.” 

Working on intel a week old, brought to them by a clone who'd defected, a few of the Rebellion’s agents had to tracked her as far as Illum, but didn't dare approach. He’d warned them to stay the hell away from her, actually. A brother who had been ordered to shoot the Jedi - his Jedi - again - what were the fucking chances? Who came an inch too close to eating his blaster, found it torn out of his hands from twenty paces away by someone who would never let him trade his life for hers. Who heard her call back that if he still wanted to shoot either one of them in three days, he could find her again on Illum. The story rang with hope in the Force, and Obi-Wan listened. 

Vader never got to her. 

Together, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, and Rex dragged her out of a hellhole no one in the galaxy should have been able to survive. It was frozen, for one thing, and it was Illum, for another. 

Illum showed cold and twisted visions now. Or tatters of visions, whispering in unsettled currents around their ears. It was perhaps permanently affected by the upheaval of the galaxy. And even now the slightest changes on the barren surface resonated deep within the caves: the death of the team sent to hunt the Jedi down still seemed to hum in the ice-cold air, creeping along their skin and bones in ways that had nothing to do with the cold. The ugly noise seemed to be affecting the Jedi herself, who, Rex realised at first sight, was probably not quite stable. 

She was in some sort of conscious healing trance when they found her - an odd thing, one Kenobi claimed he’d never seen. She was awake, conscious enough to sense their approach, eyes distant but alert. Rex got the sense that if her ears could move, they would twitch like a cat’s. But she sat still, back against a wall and knees drawn up, staring at them and to all appearances treating them like another vision. That, after all, was what hope had become. A dream, a mirage. 

Her eyes shifted between them as they continued their approach. They moved slowly, trying for a nonthreatening air with no real idea of how well they were getting on. Ahsoka reached out to her tentatively, but there was no response - a look at the hand, flicking up to her face, then back at Rex and Obi-Wan. Up close, Rex discovered those eyes were striking: a deep jewel violet ringed with shimmering gold that sometimes attempted to eat into dark pupils, sometimes pulled back to the edge of the iris, but never actually faded.  _ Sith, _ Rex thought, then wondered if that could really be accurate. When Obi-Wan finally dropped to one knee before her and muttered something in an old language, she finally stirred, slowly unfolding her small frame, like her joints had started to rust into that position. 

“She’d almost convinced herself that she was alone,” Obi-Wan told him, once she’d been shoved into the medbay and wrapped in blankets. “Now she knows that she is not the last.” Obi-Wan shuddered at the currents of the Force milling around her - still unsettling even through the damned walls and half a ship away. “Cold comfort,” he muttered, and Rex found that he understood. How many times in the last few years had he met his brothers on the battlefield? Knowing they were alive, yet not at all themselves - it cut to the bone every single time. So he pulled out a bottle of brandy and steered Obi-Wan into a chair in a quiet room, and for the first time since Rex had crash-landed on Tatooine and found General Kenobi, the two sat down to remember their brothers. 

Unavoidably, the conversation drifted back to the clone commander who’d refused to bury a shot in his General's back a second time, long past the time she'd given up all possible claims to being a General. 

“How many Jedi failed their men,” Obi-Wan wondered aloud. 

Rex balked at that pronouncement. “Never you, Sir,” he managed hoarsely through his shock, but Obi-Wan shook his head. 

“The entire Order, Rex. We failed you every time. We failed you when we did not question the orders we were given, the missions we were assigned -” 

Oh, no, fuck that. Rex wasn’t having any of it. “Obi-Wan,” he rose to his feet sharply and crossed over to the Jedi, who was steadily losing to guilt and didn’t seem to want to fight it. Rex saw a glimmer of defeat in the flat grey eyes, and shook his head in stark refusal. 

“When the order came, it was like - a pounding in your head, it ached to resist. I was on Kamino, still not medically cleared for duty. It didn't matter that there wasn't a Jedi around, it was just - a compulsion.” 

Compulsion wasn't the right word for what that was.  _ Good soldiers follow orders _ \- Rex shuddered as the sound of that cold voice floated through his mind, still not able to say the words aloud. It still felt like they were real, like they'd break something in him and he'd feel that impulse to raise his hand and pull the trigger again. Some nights it scared him wide awake in a cold sweat. 

He looked up to find Kenobi staring at him with an expression of mingled horror and pain.  _ Kriff, probably broadcasting again - _

Obi-Wan reached out and put a hand over Rex’s, shaking his head a fraction. Somehow the touch chased away a few of the old ghosts. Rex waited for the space of one even breath, then pressed on. 

“Skywalker’s name, it stopped the screaming somehow. I got to a few brothers in time to tell them to concentrate on his name, didn't even stop to think what that meant. Some of those men ate the ends of their own blasters then and there, and some of them got into fighters and made off.” 

Obi-Wan was still staring at him with that same look, wide-eyed, perhaps seeing anew. And then, when he finally found his voice, it was half-choked with some emotion Rex couldn’t bring himself to think about. “Cody. He missed.” 

Rex stared, uncomprehending for a few seconds as the realisation took its sweet time sinking in. 

There were rumours that General Kenobi had died on Utapau. 

They were at least partly true. 

And while disbelief warred with horror, Rex was forced to admit that it made sense. Cody would have fought the order with everything he had, but he wouldn’t have had a reason to think Skywalker’s name. 

Now, Rex found himself staring up at his Jedi, wondering if he’d ever stopped to grieve all that they had lost - Jedi, clones, friends, brothers. So he did what he'd once done for all his brothers: he pulled Obi-Wan out of the chair and over to a bunk, wrapped his arms around him in a tight embrace and whispered soothing nonsense until the Jedi finally relaxed against him. 

Later, he ventured down to the medbay again to find Ahsoka sitting before the strange woman and talking to her - quiet whispering that did no more than draw a long impassive stare. The med droid reported her full recovery from hypothermia, but still she shivered and remained completely silent, staring straight through most people. Liura followed any direct instruction to move from one place to another, ate mechanically, drank when a glass of water was handed to her. When asked if she’d managed to secure schematics for the new weapon, Lia produced a small datachip, seemingly out of thin air, and handed it over. 

Ahsoka seemed to think the best place for her to recover was, remarkably, Tatooine. It was certainly warm, in ways Illum had not been. “The younglings might help,” she’d suggested. 

Obi-Wan mumbled a wry joke about taking in strays, but in truth he was wary of this woman in a way he hadn't expected to be. At least the fact that Rex kept an eye on her seemed to reassure him somewhat. And Rex, faced with gold dancing in her eyes and remembering the acrid feeling he got around Krell, was only too happy to keep an eye on her. Then, he hadn't known what to look for. Now, he was more sensitive to it. Lia didn't feel like Krell, the bitter tang in the air around her was comparatively mild. But there was still something there, sharp, hard, brittle and dark, like polished obsidian. 

For all that Agami’s wreckage, converted into a large home, was far more appropriate housing for a group of fourteen or so, Obi-Wan hadn’t quite been able to let go of the moisture farm he’d claimed. Rex understood the reason for it, even if his own farm had been easier to give up. Obi-Wan had been trapped on Tatooine longer. So, often enough they found themselves there - Obi-Wan making sure nothing exploded since the last time he’d checked and tending to his plants; Rex helping him fix things and keeping an eye on whoever decided to follow them out to the hut that day. 

Lia also seemed to prefer this place. She remained just as silent, quiet clinging to her and to the moisture farm like a living thing. But as she sat outside, back propped up against the dusty wall, the younglings watched her curiously from a safe distance. Rex and Obi-Wan observed a careful dance each day, almost a ritual: some of the bolder younglings would move closer, one might offer her water, one might even be bold enough to try offering food. Each day, there was a polite nod of acknowledgement, sometimes a sketch of a smile, but otherwise Lia remained distant. 

Finally the also-silent Rishii settled before her. Lia’s eyes showed a flicker of awareness then, and she tipped her head to one side, questioning. The Rishii held out an upturned hand, claws loosely curled in, and then opened it. Lia stared for a long moment at the empty palm, then raised her own hand to copy the gesture. The Rishii hooted softly, and darted forward into the surprised woman’s embrace. 

Of the two, Irrshi was the first to start speaking again - and that was how they discovered her name. Lia remained reticent, but eventually she began hooting and trilling fluently in response, at first speaking only with ‘Irri’, as the Rishii preferred to be known. For the rest of the younglings, it was like a dam had broken, and they swarmed and accepted the woman as one of their own. With Agami in their league, this effectively left Rex and Obi-Wan without a choice but to accept the stranger. 

Still, it wasn’t everything. The gold did fade slightly from her eyes, but Rex didn’t have to look hard to know it was still there, dancing at the edge of the irises. It made Obi-Wan a bit nervous, he knew, and he always slept with a blaster under his pillow. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of child slavery/human trafficking. Definitely PTSD.


End file.
